Never say die!
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Ryo Yasohachi
Translation: Yota Okutani
What They Say
In another reality, humans never die. If they get sick or injured, they simply “kill” themselves and immediately come back to life. But then a mysterious disease, Ressurrection Deficiency Syndrome, starts spreading through the populace via Vectors. A task force is determined to solve the mystery of RDS but a group of escape artists hamper their efforts.
Technical:
The front cover here is a fantastically bloody spread of Fuurin aiming her guns with an uninterested look on her face. It’s a real strong image with some serious pop to it, and it definitely helps draw attention to the book. The back cover on the other hand uses imagery from the book carefully organized in a brilliant manner, with the added pop of red blood splattered over the black and white pictures. It’s brilliantly pieced together and just looks great. There are some nice little short comics interspersed throughout that make for a very nice bonus, though there aren’t really any other extras. Paper quality feels solid, honorifics are not used, sound effects are left in their original format and subtitled, and text reads smoothly.
For the most part, the art in this book is solid but unexceptional. The characters have a moderate amount of detail and look distinct enough, and the artwork absolutely does its job. It’s hard to say that anything every truly pops or comes across especially wonderfully most of the book. The exception, though, is the action, which is displayed absolutely amazingly. When things heat up, the characters practically jumps off the page, and it truly does look great. Which is very fortunate, as that’s certainly the book’s bread and butter. The backgrounds also do deserve note, as they appear at a slightly above accurate frequency and look quite good. All added together, this results in a decent looking book with some occasional spikes into excellence.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As our book opens, we see a young man named Teruyoshi standing over his girlfriend Ikumi with a gun, holding it to her head as she suffers and begs him to shoot. He does, and… she revives immediately and feels just fine. As it turns out, this is a world where mankind can naturally resurrect from death, and as such people will kill themselves in order to do away with simple colds or injuries, which is what we opened on. It’s a great opening that really catches your attention, wonderfully drawing you into the world by playing with your expectations. We also casually learn that there’s a disease called Resurrection Deficiency Syndrome that takes away the ability to revive being passed around by the transmitters called “Vectors”, who are hunted by the police.
To hit on the main thrust of our immediate drama, Teruyoshi is of course secretly a Vector, Ikumi’s brother is a detective, and Teruyoshi realizes that his disease will kill Ikumi if he stays with her. This comes to a head when Teruyoshi tries to flee without telling anyone, Ikumi’s brother catches him and accuses him of being a Vector, and Ikumi jumps in the middle. And it’s then that a girl in a school uniform wielding tommy guns just comes in hot and shoots up the police like crazy, allowing Teruyoshi to escape. Oh, and then we end on Ikumi shooting herself to prove that Teruyoshi didn’t infect her, and she of course stays dead this time. It’s yet another strong opening twist, as we actually shift our focus to Ikumi’s brother (from now on referred to as Kenzaki) and the “Escape Artist” girl, Fuurin, after this bloody and brilliant change.
For the next two chapters, we see the task force for hunting vectors fighting with Fuurin, in which we more accurately learn about the whole of the situation. It’s nice to see Fuurin’s actual methods, and along the way it becomes more and more clear just how much of a professional she is. Oh, and it turns out that Fuurin is actually working as an office assistant for the task force, adding to the tension. Though we do later find out that this is a bit of purposeful infiltration rather than a crazy coincidence, which is nice and logical. Oh, and we do see some brilliant action that also plays with the method of resurrection, forcing Fuurin to actually incapacitate them in such a way that they can’t quickly kill themselves. It’s played very well and certainly makes for some great fight scenes, which is wonderful to see.
Finally, in the back half of the volume, the plot actually starts to expand out. For example, the task force captures a vector who reveals that the disease is being spread due to a point system, and once they spread it to three people, they’re granted immortality (though the form is mysteriously slightly different). So that adds a somewhat creepy STD chain letter feel to things, which is certainly interesting. Fuurin also gains a partner in the form of her sister, and we learn that they take orders from their “Mama.” Oh, and Yoshiteru turns out to not be a complete throwaway character, as we learn that he now wants to become an Escape Artist, so that’s nice. And finally, we end on Fuurin getting an order to seduce Kenzaki to give him the disease, and thus in turn killing him, setting up a very interesting setup for next time.
In Summary
By playing with expectations, having a truly intriguing setup, and pumping things full of some brilliant action, this volume gets the series off to a great start. On top of that, we get a semi-dueling protagonist setup, and it’s interesting to see both Fuurin and Kenzaki interact. But really, the best bit here is the way that the world slowly unfolds, offering new details at just the right rate. Just when you start to get into the flow of things, the book throws something new at you, making for a wonderful pacing. And the fights also build well off the idea of resurrection, making each battle feel unique and exciting. All this adds up to a brilliant first entry, so be sure to give it a look if the setup sounds interesting to you, as it’s unlikely to disappoint.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: B+
Package Rating: B+
Text/Translation Rating: B+
Released by: Vertical
Release Date: July 26th, 2016
MSRP: $12.95
